Echoes of Another Ending
by Rebecca Steven Taylor
Summary: In every timeline there was a different ending - and echoes of those timelines bleed through, showing Aziraphale a very different ending.
1. Chapter 1

Aziraphale was in love with the sexiest man in London. Well, England. Ok, the world. And Heaven. And Hell.

It wasn't just his own opinion. He saw the way everyone looked at him, men and women. More than a few women totally ignored their own partners when Anthony J Crowley sauntered by. More than a few men looked as if they were reassessing their own personal life choices when they caught a glimpse of Crowley sprawled across a bench.

Aziraphale wasn't completely unaware of all this. He had experienced a few interesting moments in a discreet gentleman's club in Portland Place that didn't involve the gavotte, and was aware of Crowley's effect. But he – he loved Crowley. He didn't just want the man the rest the others only glimpsed, he wanted the man who saved his books and went to Sondheim premieres with him and worried about kids and took him out drinking. He wanted that man, and if he couldn't have that man, well, he was far happier alone.

But as every being everywhere wanted Crowley, then Crowley would have his choice of – whatever he liked to do with people. A man like that must have dozens of friends and lovers and people to fraternise with. Aziraphale was just grateful for the time he got with Crowley.

Aziraphale had no idea that Crowley had barely noticed anyone else apart from Aziraphale existed in the 6000 years they had know each other.

OoOoOo

They had won, hadn't they? Satan defeated, the Four Horsemen defeated, the Antichrist just a normal child again. All kinds of complicated feelings had been kicked up by the whole affair, but now he and Crowley had all the time in the world to sort that out.

'Come on, Angel, home,' Crowley said, as Adam's dad drove the kids away. But then Anathema had called out, and Crowley had turned just in time to see Beelzebub, longing for revenge, snatch the sword out of Aziraphale's hand and stab Crowley with it.

'Traitors die,' she hissed. Crowley fell, and Aziraphale fell with him onto the concrete. The sword was a creation of God, and Crowley burned before his eyes. There wasn't even time to say goodbye. Nothing could be said.

When his arms were empty, Aziraphale looked up at Gabriel, standing approvingly beside Beelzebub.

'Kill me too!' he cried.

'I don't think so,' Gabriel told him. 'I think losing him is punishment enough. And I'm keeping the sword.'

OoOoOoOo

Aziraphale sat on a bench in Tadfield. He didn't know why. He just had no-where else to go.

'Do you believe in life after death?' the delivery man had asked him.

'I don't believe in anything.' Aziraphale said dully. Gone. It was all gone. Crowley wasn't going to swagger into his shop again. There would be no more moments of a shared joke, no more shared miracles and temptations. No dinner at the Ritz. No touch, or smile.

He thought for a moment of a night in 1941, when love had swept through him, and then he realised the memory hurt far too much. How could humans love? Surely such pain destroyed their bodies?

'Where are you off to now?' the delivery driver asked. 'There's a bus to Oxford in a minute.'

'I'm not really sure. My bookshop, I suppose.'

_It burned down, remember? You can stay at my place._

'Crowley?' Aziraphale said, and turned to look at the bench beside him. It was empty, though he swore he could smell red wine.

Just his imagination.

He got on the bus and sat alone in the front seat. He could feel the gap next to him all the way. Just nothingness. He supposed that was his life now – an eternity of nothing.

That didn't help. He remembered Crowley shouting 'eternity!' in his shop and the pair agreeing to be godfathers and those ridiculous disguises and he wept.

No-one really paid attention to the middle-aged man weeping alone. Night buses are full of men like that. But no-one sat next to him. Though they saw the seat was empty, something told them it was taken.


	2. Chapter 2

For some reason, the bus went all the way to London, though Aziraphale hadn't asked him to. When he asked the driver, he had no idea why he had gone there either.

'Just knew I had to,' he said. They had stopped outside Crowley's flat.

'I'm never going to talk to you again,' Aziraphale whispered, leaning on the wall outside Crowley's door. A few hours ago it had been the worst fate he could think of, and it had come true, just not in the way he imagined.

He stared up at the demon's flat. How did he even get in? He wanted more than anything to be up there, in those walls, to catch the last traces of Crowley before he disappeared forever. The last scent of him. The last crumple in his sheets. His last breath in the air. But how to get in?

'I don't think my side wants me to do this,' he said to himself.

_You don't have a side any more. Neither of us do. We're on our own side._

Aziraphale spun round. He had heard that, he was sure! But perhaps he was just remembering when that had happened on the bandstand. He had got it so wrong. He had been so terrified by heaven, and by the image they had put into his head of fighting Crowley that he hadn't known what to do. Heaven was good, weren't they? If they could stop the war they would? But if they got even a glimpse of Crowley they would have killed him there and then.

The door opened. He hadn't touched it. It had just swung open.

He walked in.

It was dark inside. Even the brightly lit lift seemed to be full of shadows.

Crowley's door stood open.

_Well, come in, Angel._

Was he going mad? Humans heard voices, in their madness. If it was a madness that meant he heard Crowley, he'd welcome it. He walked in.

There was a stain on the floor in front of him. What on earth was that?

_Holy water. Ligur._

He walked in. The flat was cold and grey and didn't feel like Crowley at all. The throne was hardly his style, surely? He'd always seemed to feel comfortable in the sofa in the back of his shop.

There was a tartan thermos on the floor. His thermos, the one he had given Crowley.

'I should have accepted your lift, dearest.'

He waited for an answering voice. There was none. He walked though the concrete door and gasped. There was a garden there, lush and green and familiar. Eden. It was like walking through Eden. At the end was a statue, originally of two wrestlers fighting, but with added wings, so now it was two angels.

_Stop blushing, angel._

For an imaginary voice, it was very strong. He turned back. There was a Roman vase there – he knew it! They had gone to Petronius for oysters and that vase had been in the corner. Was it the real one?

_Souvenir, angel._

'Souvenir of what?'

_You and me_

He walked on through the flat. There was another statue at the other end. Not an angel, but an eagle. He knew it. It was from the church Crowley had rescued him from during the Blitz. The moment Crowley had saved his books. The moment he had known he loved Crowley. He touched it reverently.

'Why?'

_You loved me then_

'I love you now.'

_Well, it's about bloody time._

'Oh, Crowley, darling, we've run out of time.'

_This whole flat is souvenirs of you. Just so I can think about you until I see you again. That's how I feel. That's how I've always felt. How could you ever doubt me, angel?'_

'It's too late.'

And then he heard another voice – his own voice say 'Well, I know now.'

Oh. Aziraphale sunk down on the floor. It wasn't his Crowley talking at all. It was another Crowley from another timeline, bleeding through. Somewhere this had all ended differently. Somewhere he and Crowley had survived and now they were here together. He was hearing echoes of another ending – a happy ending.

That was all he would ever have. Echoes of another ending.

He found Crowley's bedroom. He crawled in beneath the sheets and lay there all night, listening to another Crowley and another Aziraphale tell each other of their love.


	3. Chapter 3

'What are you doing in my bed, Angel?'

Aziraphale woke up. The hallucination was getting very strong now. He could swear he could see Crowley sitting on the end of his bed, grinning maddeningly straight at him. The other Aziraphale must be here. He lay very still, and stared at the other Crowley.

'Well? I'm waiting for an answer. Or I could just crawl in there and join you.'

No – hang on. This voice was different. He reached out a tentative hand – and touched solid, cool flesh.

'You're real!' Aziraphale gasped.

'Well of course I'm real. Why did you leave? Had to drive myself back up here.'

'In your Bentley?' Aziraphale said.

'Of course in my Bentley. Are you all right?'

Aziraphale lay back gasping against the pillows.

'You died. You died in my arms, I felt you die!'

'Adam reset reality. There was just a bit of a time lag.'

'You died!'

Crowley got in beside the angel and put his arm round him. He could feel Aziraphale shaking, and the angel grasped at him, hanging on tight, trying to prove he was real.

'Yeah, you died too,' he said. 'I know, angel. I know. If you felt half of what I felt….But I'm alive and you're alive and I fancy breakfast at the Ritz.'

'I…'

'So you've seen my flat. All my souvenirs. What do you think?' He looked down at the angel, still shivering with shock. 'Do you understand now?' he said softly.

Oh yes. Everything was clear now.

'I came back from the dead for you,' Aziraphale said. 'And now you've done the same for me. I understand.'

Crowley bent down and kissed Aziraphale on the lips, the kind of kiss that is soft and gentle and promises many more kisses in the future. A whole eternity of them.

OoOoOo

Somewhere in another timeline, Crowley sat alone, clutching Agnes Nutter's book, surrounded by his souvenirs of a lifetime spent loving Aziraphale.

_I came back from the dead for you_

The demon understood more about time than the angel, and knew exactly what he was hearing – echoes of another Crowley's happy ending. He'd heard that Aziraphale all alone all night, and he had spent every ounce of demonic power he had to just slightly alter things in that timeline. At least he'd done it before the end. Armageddon raged all around him. Aziraphale had died to stop it, and yet it hadn't stopped and Satan towered over the horizon. Smiling, he sat back. Angels were coming for him, armed with holy water. Let them come. He could hear them on the door as he sat back and listened to all the other echoes of happy endings.


End file.
